Infosys, India&rsquo;s second largest information technology (IT) services company, is set to announce its third quarter (Q3) earnings for FY13 on January 11. It is widely believed that the company&rsquo;s financial performance would fail to meet Street expectations. The company is also expected to revise its already conservative annual revenue growth forecast of five per cent downward, despite the revenue it accrues from its recent acquisition, Lodestone.

Infosys: Will it meet street expectations?

Business Standard

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;Women at work&rdquo; (January 8). In stooping so low as to shift the blame for the unspeakable violence on the gang-rape victim, Asaram Bapu has betrayed his mental derangement and spiritual bankruptcy. Reading between the lines, we discern that the self-proclaimed spiritual guru makes an attempt to put the perpetrators of the crime on a pedestal. The pity is that men with misogynistic attitudes are masquerading as spiritual gurus and misleading the people about gender roles and relations. It&rsquo;s time they are exposed for what they are, and are socially boycotted.

Letters: Retrogressive ideas

The government&rsquo;s announcement yesterday on raising railway passenger fares for all classes of travel was long overdue. Basic fares for all categories, except a small segment of upper-class and air-conditioned travel, have remained unchanged for almost 10 years. As a result, the Indian Railways&rsquo; losses in passenger operations are estimated to have risen to Rs 25,000 crore in 2012-13, a fourfold increase over 2004-05. Cross-subsidisation of passenger fares through increases in freight rates helped only up to a point. That option is now exhausted since competition from other modes of transport has made railway freight rates unviable. With the Indian Railways&rsquo; ability to generate internal resources seriously impaired, investments in fresh capacity &ndash; and even maintaining existing facilities, including safety measures &ndash; have slowed with the curtailment of its annual plan size in the last few years.

Railways moves forward 

&ldquo;Aadhaar is being made de facto compulsory for welfare schemes.

Is UID-linked cash transfer a good idea?

By all accounts, the finance ministry is seriously considering increasing the marginal tax rate on the richest Indians in the next Union Budget. The reasons for this are easy to understand. The Centre needs to act on fiscal consolidation urgently &mdash; the reminder from Fitch, the ratings agency, this week that India still stood at risk of a downgrade will not have eased minds in New Delhi. Direct tax rates have not been revised for some time; they remain at the level set by Finance Minister P Chidambaram during his first stint in the job, in 1997. Direct tax revenue was then at six per cent of gross domestic product, but is now actually lower. Further, the Congress party will no doubt try and sell any tax increase on the richest Indians as proof of its aam-admi credentials.

Broadening the net

Chhattisgarh Home Minister Nanki Ram Kanwar is a deep believer in the role of astrology and religion in public life and, indeed, as an explanation for atrocities against women. When journalists sought his reaction to news of the rape of tribal girls, all minors, in the state&rsquo;s Kanker district for two years, Kanwar blamed it on the stars. In fact, he went further, and said the astral alignments worked against the paramedic student who was gang-raped in Delhi in December. No doubt he would have recommended a yagya to appease the gods. After all, that is exactly what he did when he was the state&rsquo;s agriculture minister and suspected that the state would receive deficient rainfall. It paid off, since the state received sufficient rainfall, resulting in a bumper crop.

Star power on atrocities

India suffers a chronic power shortage as last year&rsquo;s grid breakdown highlighted. But Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said you wouldn&rsquo;t think so if you visited government offices where the air-conditioning is kept at a bone-chilling 16 degrees Celsius in the summer. This was quite unlike government offices in other Asian countries, which keep the temperature at 24 degrees to save electricity consumption, he said at a recent do in the capital. True to form, however, Sen decided to find out why. &ldquo;We feel cold but we somehow manage,&rdquo; shrugged an official by way of explanation. Clearly, the simple power-saving ruse of raising the temperature, a small service to the nation, has not occurred to India&rsquo;s bureaucrats and ministers.

Cold comfort

Former Union minister and senior leader of the Congress in Jharkhand, Subodh Kant Sahay, is not willing to speak to the media these days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) government fell in the state. Although the Congress is talking to Shibu Soren to form alliance and run a government, Sahay doesn&rsquo;t want to talk to reporters because he fears that the Congress leadership would be annoyed with him for spilling the beans. The JMM had a peculiar alliance with the BJP because the regional party is a member of the United Progressive Alliance at the Centre.

Non-talking head

This refers to Rajeev Malik&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Silencing the RBI&rdquo; (January 9). Future historians of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and perhaps Indian economy, would do well to keep this article clipping. Several observations, such as &ldquo;... a common fixture through the various gaps is a government with its head in the sand...&rdquo; and &ldquo;... perhaps Mr Gokarn became the fall guy for resisting calls for interest rate cuts by the government and industry lobby groups...&rdquo; are comments worth preserving for posterity. Without dampening the underlying hope in the change that 2014 may bring, one is tempted to ask whether this sort of blatant arrogance on the part of those in charge of governance &ndash; even if it was prompted by a survival instinct &ndash; was called for in handling the financial sector, and through that the fate of the country&rsquo;s economic development during the last couple of years.

Letters: North Block vs Mint Road

This refers to T Mukherjee&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Can India dare export to China?&rdquo; (January 5). It helps break some myths surrounding China&rsquo;s &ldquo;low cost manufacturing prowess&rdquo;. While it is true that China&rsquo;s large production volume (including components) has helped reduce the total costs, it is also a known fact that it has been able to &ldquo;market&rdquo; products better. China is a brand in itself, and it has been able to sell without any advertising &mdash; but mostly through word-of-mouth. However, a weakness that Indian manufacturers can exploit is Chinese products&rsquo; poor reputation for quality. If India can give even a slightly higher priced product of better quality, then in the not-too-distant future, the country stands a chance of not only standing on its own feet in the world market but also exporting to China.

Letters: Better quality than China

By merely bringing in foreign faculty cannot suffice the need for quality research. Though the faculty appointed from offshore at B-schools may serve as a medium for conducting efficient research process but it cannot be a sole criterion to depend on for improved research.

Student&#8217s corner

What explains the Indian political system&rsquo;s stunning inability to come out and clearly defend women&rsquo;s right to leave their home, navigate safe public places and go to work? A series of recent statements on women&rsquo;s rights from politicians and leaders, especially from those who owe their allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, deserved a firm counterpoint &mdash; both from those within the Sangh&rsquo;s affiliate, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who believe in economic growth and modernisation, and from those members of the political class with no ties to the Sangh. A senior minister in the BJP&rsquo;s government in Madhya Pradesh, Kailash Vijayvargiya, declared that there was a &ldquo;Lakshman rekha&rdquo;, a line that women should not cross or else they would be subject to abduction, as Sita was in the Ramayana.

Women at work

When it comes to regional connectivity, the government of India appears to err on the side of unwarranted generosity to private airlines. Its recent decision to scrap rules that make it mandatory for airlines to deploy 10 per cent of their capacity on unviable routes like Jammu &amp; Kashmir, the northeast and the Andaman &amp; Nicobar Islands and subsidise those that agree to do so flies in the face of logic. The generosity does not stop here. The government also plans to approach state governments in such regions to lower sales tax on aviation turbine fuel (ATF) to attract private carriers to their airports. It is hard to understand the logic of either policy. First, although it is true that airlines incur losses on these routes, they can by no means be suffering losses solely on account of them. That&rsquo;s because they cover these losses through cross-subsidies in regular passenger fares on other, viable routes.

Flying in the face of logic

There are many reasons companies choose to change their names but a senior bureaucrat in Gujarat discovered a truly unique reason. The case in point is the waste management outfit Narmada Clean Tech Ltd, of which the bureaucrat is a board member. Initially called Bharuch Eco Aqua Infrastructure Ltd, its chief demanded a new name. Why? It turned out that for some time, treated effluent from the outfit would be disposed of in a natural creek called Amlakhadi leading to the Narmada estuary. Thanks to the effluent, the local people began to call it the &ldquo;gandaa (dirty) canal&rdquo;, and as a result, the officer in charge was called &ldquo;gandaa canal saab&rdquo;. Since nobody would want such an appellation, the officer was keen that the company got a new identity.

A dirty picture

Economic growth data could be a matter of perception, and its beauty or otherwise clearly lies in the eyes of the beholder. Speaking recently in New Delhi, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen recalled taking a call from a French newspaper after the euro zone recorded zero growth in June. &ldquo;They wanted to interview me because &lsquo;it&rsquo;s a great thing that growth in the euro zone has stopped declining&rsquo;,&rdquo; he said. After two hours, he got a call from an Indian news channel asking for an interview on the &ldquo;dismal&rdquo; gross domestic product data for the April-June quarter.

Dismal sciences

Inequality is certainly a serious problem in India but Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh seems keen to ensure equality in every aspect of public life. At a recent event in the capital, he was asked to moderate a panel discussion. When the floor was opened for questions, he took the stage and declared that he would ensure that &ldquo;demographic, professional and racial equity&rdquo; was maintained even during question hour.

A question of equity

This refers to the report &ldquo;Give preference to non-corporate sector for new banking licences: Rangarajan&rdquo; (January 7). Earlier this week, Nobel-laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz expressed his discomfort at the idea of allowing corporate houses to own banks, saying it amounted to a conflict of interest. The corporate sector missed the bus earlier when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) opened the financial sector to new-generation banks on the same ground that an industrial house cannot own a bank. Now, RBI prefers non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and industrial houses to enter the sector. The fear of conflict of interest is exaggerated. It is wrong to assume that the corporate sector will necessarily misuse the banking channel. Even if the bank is not owned by an industrial house, it can have access to bank funds.

Letters: Give corporations a chance

Although many non-banking financial institutions and financial institutions are today strong private banks, it is time the Reserve Bank of India opened the banking sector to corporations as well. The need of the hour is not the number of banks &mdash; but their size. Apart from India, all other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries have one or more banks in the world&rsquo;s top 50 list. The central bank should issue licences to corporations that show potential. The risk of default is also lessened owing to the fact that real estate broking firms and stock brokers cannot apply. Moreover, there is a cap on foreign investment.

Letters: . . . and reduce default risk

This refers to your editorial &ldquo;Solving the gold riddle&rdquo; (January 4). Why does no one highlight the persistently high level of inflation that the ruling United Progressive Alliance has unleashed upon us as another kind of tax on the people who save. Bring inflation close to one or two per cent, and see who buys gold to beat inflation.

Letters: Inflation-gold equations

If spiritual leader Asaram Bapu suggests she should have begged her rapists for mercy, Madhya Pradesh Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya warns her ilk not to cross the 'Laxman Rekha'. RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat says such rapes happen only in India (read urban) and not in Bharat (rural), while the President's son, Abhijeet Mukherjee, smirks at the &quot;highly dented-painted&quot; women protesters at India Gate.

Are these men simply callous about the Delhi rape victim's plight or do they have a point?

An improvement in economic and corporate earnings growth in Asia in 2013 has created a favourable backdrop for equities, especially when valuations are inexpensive and investors are conservative, said Goldman Sachs. In its report, the investment bank said the watchwords for 2013 are &lsquo;growth recovery&rsquo; as the US has reached a fiscal compromise and China&rsquo;s growth and policy outlook has firmed.

Business Standard

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Page 790 - Business Standard

Infosys: Will it meet street expectations?

Letters: Retrogressive ideas

Railways moves forward

Is UID-linked cash transfer a good idea?

Broadening the net

Star power on atrocities

Cold comfort

Non-talking head

Letters: North Block vs Mint Road

Letters: Better quality than China

Student’s corner

Women at work

Flying in the face of logic

A dirty picture

Dismal sciences

A question of equity

Letters: Give corporations a chance

Letters: . . . and reduce default risk

Letters: Inflation-gold equations

Are these men simply callous about the Delhi rape victim's plight or do they have a point?